4th of July, Mountain Style – Continued

Zach has a secret talent – dancing with fire… For the last few years he has been practicing this ancient warrior-style dance… Pretty awesome. I was able to capture alot of it with my flash, with extended shutter time. For photo-guys I strobed at 1/8th power, shutter at 1/10th of a sec, and f/10. This way I was able to get him, and his priceless expression, plus the movement of the fire-stick.

After the show we go inside for a wonderful tri-tip dinner masterfully crafted by Scott, accompanied with root veggies, and cranberry walnut salad with balsamic vinegrette. Well done. I can say if anything, the food up here is worth the sickness, for I haven’t lost my appetite. We chat some more about local sights and world traveling. Scott has been the cook up at Barcroft Lab and Crooked Creek Lab for hte last three years, and he absolutely loves what he does, and it shows.

After dinner we decide to see if we can catch the rest of the fireworks show at the Bishop Airport. By the way it is below 30 degrees outside with a crazy windchill so we are wearing huge “oompa loompa” puffy jackets to stay warm!

We then hop into the rental SUV and drive down to the gate that locks up the trail to Barcroft. For those people not affiliated with the research station who still want to hike up the mountain, this adds another 2 miles to their hike. We did run into a few day-hikers during our mini-hike, and another one with a dog walking in pitch black darkness. As we are driving down the lights of Bishop, CA are shining through, and suddenly we see a burst of fireworks. We get out of the car and admire the show from afar for about an hour. Unfortunately I have no pictures of this, and also none of the stargazing we did afterwards but by far the clearest and brightest I have ever seen the Milky Way. PS…. how can we be in the milky way and still see it? In August I will come back better equipped to do some astrophotograpy with the guys from UCSB.

Inspired by the fireworks display we just witnessed, we put on a show of our own! These were the ones we bought from Phantom Fireworks the day before: The 3 volcanoes – Mt Etna, Mt Kiluaea, and Mt. Vesuvius, 2 “Electric Shock fountains” and our favorite, the “Firecracker Fountain” or affectionally known as cracker mountain by the staff.

Current time? 2:24 AM PST. I’m still nursing the headache… insomnia like none other, and suddenly nosebleeds. I guess I better drink some more water. It’s damn dry up here, and the low pressure makes it even worse. We are heading off at 7am tomorrow AM to see the Bristlecone Pines, which I have been DYING to photograph all weekend. San Diego ETA: 7pm.

Vince